Instant Pot Mexican Black Beans & Brown Rice

Instant Pot Mexican Black Beans & Brown Rice. A delicious healthy vegan recipe made with pantry staples. Perfect after a workout, to add to your lunchbox, ideal for meal prep, or as an easy no fuss side dish. Made in the instant pot with canned black beans this recipe is a fantastic dump and start Mexican favourite.

Instant Pot Mexican Black Beans & Rice

This easy instant pot Mexican black beans and rice recipe is an update from a 2017 recipe. We were lucky to receive a big batch of brown rice and decided that the last of the supply would be used to update our instant pot Mexican black beans recipe and remind you all that food from the pantry is AMAZING.

I love Mexican food. I love the spices; I love the flavour and best of all I love how it shouts out comfort food.

I can remember like yesterday the first time I ever had Mexican food. I had just moved in with my boyfriend (he is now my husband of 17 years) and my mum was doing Mexican food for a dinner party she was having. She had made a Mexican lasagne and had loads of surplus.

Therefore, she gave me a big Mexican Lasagne to take home with me along with some nachos.

They were delicious. Well I thought so. Dominic on the other hand, had not mentioned before this that he absolutely hated Mexican food and that spices made him ill.

He spent the next day or so on the toilet and my love affair with Mexican food started.

I would eat nachos, wraps or even more Mexican lasagne whenever I got the chance.

Though even though I had become obsessed with Mexican food, black beans were just not a trendy food to eat growing up in the UK, therefore I had to move to Portugal to get black beans on the brain.

Here in Portugal black beans are a big staple of the day to day Portuguese diet. Often served in a soup or stew and many times used as a ground meat alternative in burgers, meatballs and meatloaves.

My favourite way to eat black beans is as Nando’s Beanie Burgers, though most of the time I use black beans to fill out a meal and make the portion sizes go further.

Today’s Instant PotMexican Black Beans & Rice recipe is inspired by my love for healthy eating. To have something filling and healthy that I can eat after a workout or when I am bored of meat and I am looking for a quick vegan alternative.

If you have an instant pot, or another brand of electric pressure cooker, let me tell you now that cooking canned black beans with brown rice at the same time, is one of the easiest and most addictive instant pot beginner recipes, try it once and you will be hooked.

Instant Pot Brown Rice & Canned Black Beans

You look at some instant pot recipes and think to yourself that it shouldn’t work and that it won’t go together or go to pressure properly.

That’s what many people have said to me when I have suggested instant pot brown rice and canned black beans.

Black beans are out of a can and all soggy and brown rice hasn’t even been cooked yet.

Or that you can only cook instant pot brown rice using the pot in pot method.

Well let me tell you now that instant pot brown rice and canned black beans does work. But not only does it work, it rocks your instant pot world.

I had a big bag of wholefoods brown rice and made lots of variations of brown rice. This black bean version was the easiest and the one I ate the quickest. I just couldn’t put it down and was doing that fridge door open thing with a fork that none of us admit to.

Instant Pot Canned Black Beans #1 Tip

What will cause your instant pot NOT to go to pressure, is mushy black beans. Just like when you don’t have the liquid ratio correct, or you have too thick a liquid.

What you need to do is rinse your can of black beans with a mesh strainer prior to adding the black beans into the instant pot. This will solve the problem and will stop of the black beans from having that mushy texture.

It will also help with the texture of your brown rice and black beans once cooked.

What Ingredients For Instant Pot Mexican Rice & Beans?

There are 4 main ingredients that go into instant pot Mexican rice and beans:

How To Cook Brown Rice & Black Beans In Instant Pot

Making instant pot brown rice and black beans is EASY and it is a case of starting with a sauté, rinsing your beans and rice, loading up your ingredients, stirring and then placing the lid on the instant pot.

Sauté your diced onion, with extra virgin olive oil.

Drain and rinse your black beans.

Rinse your brown rice.

Load the rest of your ingredients into the instant pot, add water and stir.

Place the lid on the instant pot, set the valve to sealing and cook for 17 minutes, followed by a further 5 minutes on natural pressure release.

Fluff up your rice with a fork and serve.

Simple Instant Pot Black Beans And Rice

Mexican food might affect you the way it does Dominic and you might not care for the flavours of Mexico. If that is YOU then it is very easy to leave out the extra flavours and just have a simple instant pot black beans and rice recipe.

Forget the jalapenos and the Mexican seasoning and instead replace jalapenos with thinly sliced red and green peppers. Or use the baby sweet peppers instead. Then swap Mexican seasoning for parsley, oregano, thyme or a mixture of the three for a more Mediterranean flavour.

Instant Pot Mexican Black Beans & Brown Rice

Instant Pot Mexican Black Beans & Brown Rice. A delicious healthy vegan recipe made with pantry staples. Perfect after a workout, to add to your lunchbox, ideal for meal prep, or as an easy no fuss side dish. Made in the instant pot with canned black beans this recipe is a fantastic dump and start Mexican favourite.

Nutrition InfoPlease Note: Nutrition values are our best estimate based on the software we use at Recipe This and are meant as a guide. If you rely on them for your diet, use your preferred nutrition calculator.

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Hello, we’re the Milner’s and we run Recipe This from our home in the Algarve in Southern Portugal. We’re made up of husband and wife duo Dom & Sam along with our 3 amazing kids. We love cooking with our huge collection of kitchen gadgets.

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